My totals are terrible for this last week for a few reasons, most notably the weather in Texas. Monday it snowed, Wednesday was decent, and Thursday it snowed again. For those of you that don't live in Texas, let me set the stage for you: Dallas doesn't know how to handle snow. I mentioned some of it last week, but I forgot to mention that the city has like, 1 sand truck for the whole town despite the fact that it snows/ices over at least once a year. You would think at some point they'd get a handle on this issue, but no. So that's 2 days that were out. I'll admit that I could have worked out indoors, but I really hate running on a treadmill and spin classes just plain suck. So yea, I could have done more if I really felt like it...but I didn't. Tuesday was out because of the voting debacle, which also affected me because I postponed a session with the swim coach to go vote. I'm going to go ahead and paste my review of the caucus process from another site at the bottom of this blog(or just click here) for anyone that's interested(if you're not, ignore the part below the weekly total). It was chaos. Between those two issues my potential workout week got chopped in half. So yea, my totals suck. I did a big bike/run brick yesterday to make up for it.

About the only notable workout-related thing that happened this week is that my stamina in the water is improving. I was ablt to knock out a 400yd swim without stopping, which is a significant improvement. The new form is starting to take hold, and I'm now cruising at about a 1:50/100yd pace instead of the 2:00-2:15/100yd pace I was doing prior to working with the coach. I was able to do a 50yd swim in 41 seconds, which means if I could keep up that pace(not likely anytime soon) in a sprint tri I'd have a swim time in the neighborhood of 4:06. To put that in perspective, my best 300yd swim to date is 5:08. Another way to look at it is that the guy whose swim time was 1st in the whole tri put down a 3:41. 4:06 would make me 2nd in my AG(Age Group) behind only that guy.

03/02-03/08 Totals:Swim: 2500.00 Yd - 46m 12s Run: 3.12 Mi - 32m 36s

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I voted in the Dem primary yesterday; not so much because I like Clinton or Obama as the GOP nomination was sewn up and I wanted to be a part of a process that still affected the outcome. I hit the primary at around 3:30 and got done with the voting in about 10 minutes. It was a quick process since I went before people got off work. I voted for Obama(while gritting my teeth) and headed home for a few hours. I came back at about 6:45 with my walkman(there was a Texas basketball game on) and sat around listening to most of the game while I waited for the caucus organizers to get their shit together. It took 2 hours just to get signed in for a couple reasons. First, they didn't validate anyone as they walked in the door. Somebody started letting people in before they were supposed to, so all 200+ of us walked in and stood/sat around while the organizers tried to figure out wtf to do. Second, they couldn't validate any of the early voters until the polls closed & all the votes were counted & verified. Why? Because there was only one copy of 'the big black book' that had all the names of people that voted, and that was the only method for verifying early voters since early voters didn't get the coveted stamp they needed. For those of us with a stamp, we could get signed in. However, the people who didn't have the stamp didn't realize they couldn't get validated because the organizers did a piss-poor job of explaining this issue. Instead of making those without stamps get out of the line, they would get 4-5 voter cards at a time and hoof it back to the other room to verify they had voted early. This delayed both the stamped and unstamped people because they wouldn't let others sign in until the 4-5 people had been verified(which would take 5-10 minutes each time). Did I mention the line? When I say line, I mean 'disorganized glut of humans in a general area'. There were 9 people that could verify IDs, but rarely more than 3 people were being checked at any given time because there was no 'line'. So it took ~2 hours to get everyone signed in.

Watching that process last night made me realize a few things:

1) Democrats can't organize anything. They couldn't even decide how people would write down who they were being a delegate for(actual quote from the precinct chair: "First name or last name? LET'S ALL VOTE ON IT"). I'm starting to understand how the Democrats lost in '04.

2) Caucuses make me think there are certain advantages to a dictatorship. Everything moves more quickly when you know your vote is going to be burned in the back room.

3) It's amazing anybody gets elected in this system. It was chaos. It took nearly 4 hours for ~200 people to work through the caucus where I was.

4) I'm not so worried about voting machines anymore. More to the point, given how ripe the entire primary system is to manipulation, the voting machines are now just another item in the pile of potential clusterf*cks.

Oh and back to the game: Let me set the stage for you. Texas was up & down all night, being down 10-3 early then going on a 15-0 run and eventually being up by 12 at the half. They had the lead up to 17 at one point, which Nebraska erased with about 3 minutes left in the game. There were 75 seconds left and Texas was up by two when I took off the headphones to sign in(they were giving instructions, etc.). When I put the headphones back on, the game was gone. What happened? KSKY(660 AM, the local Texas radio affiliate) pre-empted the last minute of the game to air the MIKE F*CKING HUCKABEE CONCESSION SPEECH! WTF?!?!? Hey K-SKY, here's a little nugget for you: when the most popular college team in the state is trying to win a conference title and is only up by 2 in the last minute of the game, DON'T PRE-EMPT THEM. HUCK IS QUITTING. HE'LL STILL BE QUITTING 5 MINUTES FROM NOW. PUT THE F*CKING GAME BACK ON! I called the station this morning and lit up the general manager's voicemail, and I imagine I'm not the only one. What a ridiculous decision. I now have my own version of The Heidi Game. Listen, if McCain, Obama, or Clinton were conceding, I kinda get it. It still could wait 5 minutes, but those are at least relevant. Huckabee wasn't going to win the nomination, period. This isn't news. But back to the caucus...

Many people don't realize this, but at a caucus you can declared as 'uncommitted'. If there are enough of you that declare this way, you can go to the convention as 'uncommitted'. But there weren't enough last night. I didn't expect there would be, but I thought there might be a few of us. There weren't. There was one person...me. Since I was the ONLY person who stayed around as 'uncommitted' and we didn't meet the threshold to get our own delegate(s), my vote decided who got the delegate for all the 'uncommitted' voters. Not only that, because of the way the numbers worked out there was another delegate that would switch sides depending on how I voted. So my one caucus vote in essence was a 4 delegate swing.

You want to be the most popular person in a room? Go to a caucus as the only 'uncommitted' voter. Every time I stood up I had 20 pairs of eyes watching me. People were welcoming me with open arms, any time I spoke they all listened to me like I was actually an interesting human being(which isn't true, ask my friends), and I got jokingly bribed with a soft taco by the Clinton people. A Clinton-supporting wheelchair-bound woman even offered to flash me in exchange for my vote. That would have been tempting if she was attractive(she wasn't).

Here's the thing: my vote got a lot harder when it became apparent that it really mattered. In a race where the delegate lead is as small as it is between Clinton & Obama, the 2 delegates I'm holding suddenly become much more important. It's infinitely easier to screw around with your vote when it doesn't have any substantive impact; if I was in the Republican primary I probably would have voted for Paul for the novelty of it(though I like some things he stands for and would enjoy the government spending getting ground to a halt with Dr. No in office, other parts of his platform are as wheels off as it gets). But for the first time probably ever, my vote actually matters. Tangibly, Clinton & Obama are very similar. They're different shades of gray on a lot of issues, even the delegates last night admitted as much. So if they're roughly the same on the tangibles, I'm going to compare the intangibles. There's a couple intangibles I'd like to see from a president: the ability to inspire the country(and Congress) and a person who won't polarize the country(and again, Congress). Well, I haven't been inspired by Hillary at all thus far, and I think it's safe to say a Clinton back in the White House isn't going to heal the division between the two parties, so I went with Obama. Because I went to Obama, he got 9 of the 12 delegates from our precinct instead of 7. My one vote made a difference. It's probably the first time and very well may be the last, but it happened. For once I felt a part of the process; it's a dysfunctional, convoluted process, but it's what we have. I did my part.

This game absolutely typifies why I love college sports more than the pros. There was so much passion, so much heart, so much fire on display during this game. Both teams played their butts off and neither team can really feel bad about the ending.

Texas:
1) Connor Atchley - or as I nicknamed him last season, "Judge Reinhold" - was amazing tonight. This is the kid we saw at the beginning of the season, the one we really thought was going to be great all year. He's struggled as of late, but tonight was a great all-around effort on his part. 16 points off 6-6 FG and 4-4 FT, you really can't ask for much more from him.
2) Damion James. What a beast. If he had stayed out of foul trouble in the first half, who knows what kind of numbers he would have put up. 14 points & 13 boards in a half. James is single-handedly the reason why Texas won the battle of the boards in the 2nd half.
3) Justin Mason: he was crashing the glass like he was trying to get worker's comp. He also makes a great point guard to free up DJ to run through screens. That guy was the glue tonight.
4) DJ Augustin. He couldn't hit water if he fell out of a boat, but he learned his lesson from the ISU game and didn't put up 20+ shots when they weren't falling. Instead he got his teammates involved. Plus he hit a few free throws down the stretch to help Texas pull out this win.
5) Gary Johnson. The guy is playing with 2 broken bones in his nose AND it's dislocated. That's just crazy. He also provided quality minutes while James was out with 2 fouls in the 1st half.

Kansas:
1) Arthur would be unstoppable if he could go 40 minutes. Fortunately for Texas, he doesn't seem to be able to handle a full 40 minute workload. Great player though.
2) Rush did a great job pestering the Texas guards. I was convinced he was going to terrorize the UT guards on the defensive end and he definitely came through.
3) If I have a stroke 5 years early, I'm blaming it on Mario Chalmers. I just knew that last 3 was going to go in. I'm pretty happy I was wrong though.
4) Kansas really is a great passing team. They passed in, out, and through Texas' 2-3 zone to the point I thought they were the Harlem Globetrotters. Oh and let's not forget them always sending a trailer on fast breaks to take care of 2nd chance points. They must have gotten 6-8 points on simple putbacks.

I love the Texas/KU series in basketball. It always seems to produce classics, like last year when Durant stirred up echoes of Danny Manning in Allen Fieldhouse(not to mention KU's eventual comeback) and this year when the game went down to the wire. Great game by both teams, and both fanbases should be proud of their kids tonight.